Modern motor vehicles include a variety of safety features to protect occupants of the vehicle in the event of a collision, including safety belts, air bags, and bumpers. As is known, typically a motor vehicle bumper will include an energy absorber component. Such energy absorber components are intended for impact protection in the event of a vehicle or pedestrian impact, and are typically deformable elements designed to absorb a majority of impact energy early in the impact, while also ensuring pedestrian protection.
As shown in FIG. 1, in a motor vehicle 10, there is typically provided a bumper assembly 12 which carries an energy absorber 14. A grille assembly 16 and an air intake element 18 are depicted also. With reference to FIG. 2, conventionally the areas encompassed by the grille assembly 16 and the energy absorber 14 do not overlap (see brackets A and B).
However, many modern motor vehicles incorporate grille assemblies which cover a larger portion of the motor vehicle front area, to provide increased air flow to the motor vehicle engine for cooling purposes and also because of aesthetic reasons and consumer preferences. Enlarging the grille assembly 16 undesirably causes the area encompassed by the grille assembly 16 to overlap the area encompassed by the energy absorber 14 (see FIG. 3, brackets A and B). This places the grille assembly 16 in an area of the motor vehicle 10 front where damage to the grille and also intrusion of the grille into the motor vehicle 10 engine compartment is likely in a frontal impact. That is, on frontal impact, the grille assembly 16 is likely to separate from the energy absorber 14 since there is no connection therebetween. Safety regulations do not allow grille assemblies 16 to be positioned in areas likely to incur damage, unless the grille is proven to absorb impact energy as an integral part of the energy absorption system of the motor vehicle 10.
Simply fastening the energy absorber 14 to the grille assembly 16 might alleviate this problem, but would present additional difficulties and added complexity and cost to the motor vehicle assembly process. Therefore, to solve these and other problems the present disclosure describes an energy absorber assembly for a motor vehicle. Advantageously, the disclosed energy absorber assembly retains engagement between a bumper-mounted energy absorber and a grille assembly in the event of an impact, causing the grille assembly to integrate into the overall energy absorption system of the motor vehicle, but does not require that any portion of the grille assembly be actually fastened to the bumper-mounted energy absorber.